The time to organize your finances is the day you have forgotten that unpaid bill and have come home to find your electricity shut off. It’s not that you don’t have the money to pay the bill on time. It is more than likely something as simple as overlooking the bill between the mire and mess of the other bills, paper mail and statements.
Many people have their finances organized and planned right down to the cent and you are probably like most. But even organized people need a system to help manage and organize their bills so they don’t lose them, forget to pay them, and therefore have the electricity shut off.
The solution? Pay and manage bills online. Here are 7 steps to take your financial and household accounts digital:
1. Make a spreadsheet. Record all the accounts that you use to pay bills. Enter that information into the first column in a basic worksheet in Excel. In the second column, enter the amount for the bill. The third column is for the bill due date and then put an “X” on the fourth column once you have paid the bill. Some of the bills you can keep track of are credit cards, electricity, cable and cell phones check bills online. This will give you an idea of how many accounts you’re going to need to start paying online. You shouldn’t have a problem with paying many of your bills online since most companies offer online bill pay.
2. Set up online bill pay. Once you have your spreadsheet of accounts, go down the list and start setting up each individual account on each company’s respective site. (An example we can use is for AT&T Wireless. If you are not already registered on the site, register as a new user under the Wireless portion of the site. If you are already a registered user, then this is one less account you need to sign up for! Once you’re logged in, you should be able to view all of your AT&T account information and pay your bills right from the site.)
3. Go paperless. Now that all of your accounts are set up online, there is no need to receive paper mail from those companies. All of the paper clutter is unnecessary and will simply confuse you even more. In order to stop receiving paper mail for all of the accounts for which you have online bill pay, simply log in to each of your accounts online and click the paperless option they offer. This option is under the sites Settings portion for most companies. You can go the Customer Service page or call the company if you are having trouble finding it.
4. Set reminders for yourself. You will need a reminder for the due dates even if you are paying your bills online. Some sites will send you email alerts when it’s almost time to pay the bill. Peruse the Settings portion of the site to see whether this is an option. If they provide alerts, select a date enough in advance so that you will be comfortable with the amount of time in which you will receive the bill reminders. If the site doesn’t offer a bill reminder option, manually enter the due dates for each bill into your calendar so you don’t forget to pay them! You can get alerts automatically if you use a digital calendar like Outlook or Google iCal to set up reminders.
5. Pay your bills. You can use the online bill pay options from the provider to set up no-hassle, easy payments online! Because not all companies offer online bill pay, make sure you note that in your financial spreadsheet you made in Step 1. That way, you will still be able to use paper mail to pay those bills.
6. Check it off. Mark your spreadsheet once the bill is paid so you will have peace of mind for the rest of the month.
7. Consolidate with bill-organizing software (optional). You can purchase software that will take care of steps 4 and 6 so you won’t have to worry about them. Plus, you’ll be able to manage your bills from one place, rather than a variety of websites. Family Finance and Moneydance are a few options you can use to create a financial budget, pay your bills and even send an alert if you are surpassing your budget.